Some Random Theses Nailed to a Random Bush on the Plains (part 1)

Martin Luther had 95 theses that he nailed to the Wittenberg Church door.  I suppose I should clarify that it was the Castle Church in Wittenberg in case any random Lutherans want to pick nits.

I'm fairly certain that his counter-cultural ideas were developed over time.  In other words, he didn't just sit down on a Halloween night and think up 95 ideas.  I'm also fairly certain that he borrowed and adapted a few of them.  I hope the Plains Lutherans don't declare me a blasphemer for using their founder's concept.  I really don't want to be force fed lutefisk for the next 7 years. I don't know if I'll every get to 95 total theses, but ever so often, I'll post one or two and see what happens.

Thesis the first:  Self-Esteem is overrated and perhaps destructive.  From a an article entitled "Theodore Dalrymple on Self-Esteem and Self Respect,"

In short, self-esteem is but a division of self-importance, which is seldom an attractive quality. That person is best who never thinks of his own importance: to think about it, even, is to be lost to morality.

Self-respect is another quality entirely. Where self-esteem is entirely egotistical, requiring that the world should pay court to oneself whatever oneself happens to be like or do, and demands nothing of the person who wants it, self-respect is a social virtue, a discipline, that requires an awareness of and sensitivity to the feelings of others. It requires an ability and willingness to put oneself in someone else's place; it requires dignity and fortitude, and not always taking the line of least resistance. [In Character, 3/28/10]

 Thesis the Second:  Walter Mosley's Blonde Faith is an excellent book, but it can't be considered a classic because of lines like "realizing in few seconds I'd be dead" followed closely by "I think I smiled, and then the world went black."  The first person narrator can't die.  He's the one telling the story.  Dead people don't tell stories, and they certainly can't tell you how they died after they're dead.  In the case the problem is exacerbated by Mosely's great sense of history and place.  He reminds readers that the 1960s were filled with racial tension.  Blonde Faith's verisimilitude should make it a classic, but Easy Rawlins's narration of his own death means the book doesn't make the canon..